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2026 will be my year of the Linux desktop

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Re: 2026 will be my year of the Linux desktop

#611

Post by pjmlp »

ptx wrote: post #582
pjmlp wrote: post #422

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except for anything that came after XP, you need to at least make use of COM. WinRT can be avoided if you don't do any modern stuff like the new context menu, WinUI, or Windows ML.

And those new APIs (at least the context menu API) apparently require a "package identity", which requires a signed MSIX installer, which requires paying for a code-signing certificate, unless I'm missing something in the docs.

That is because of what people claiming UWP is dead, haven't gotten the whole picture.

UWP as separate subsystem, yes it is deprecated, and no one should be using it, although Microsoft was forced to introduce .NET 9 support on UWP, because many refuse to move away from UWP into WinUI 3.0, given the lack of feature parity.

Now, when WinRT was made to also work on Win32 side, it also brought with it the concept of package identity, which forms a part of the whole app isolation from UWP similar to Android, now on Win32 as well, hence the MSIX.

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/secauthz/app...

On the specific case of the context menu, it depends on what is being done,

https://blogs.windows.com/windowsdeveloper/2021/07/19/extend...

You can work around app identity when using the suggested alternative of unpackaged Win32 apps with sparse manifests.

Re: 2026 will be my year of the Linux desktop

#612

Post by lelele »

There is no such thing as "desktop Linux". What we have instead is a large collection of distros, each with its own UX, unlike Windows or macOS which present a relatively unified platform.

I switched to Linux many years ago because a new laptop was unusably slow under the Windows Vista it came with, and I have not looked back since, yet I'd never recommend Linux to "the masses". Linux can work well for people who just browse the web and read email. Beyond that, the experience quickly becomes dependent on having a knowledgeable person nearby to help with choosing software and supported hardware or troubleshooting it.

To me, articles like this show how disconnected many technically inclined people are from average users' experience. Things like bloated software or aggressive advertising may be annoying to us, but to most users they are just part of using a computer.

Re: 2026 will be my year of the Linux desktop

#614

Post by the__alchemist »

stevenhuang wrote: post #600
the__alchemist wrote: post #573

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps this exercise will help. You are new to a given piece of software. A: There is a UI with 2 buttons. How many degrees of freedom is that? B: There is a text prompt, which accepts any number of unicode characters. How many degrees is that?

I read the docs and go for B. Now try to automate/script it. Good luck with A

For scripting or automation, I want something like a code editor or IDE; not a terminal.

Re: 2026 will be my year of the Linux desktop

#615

Post by casey2 »

dplesh wrote: post #613

I'm a windows user since I was 5. My favorite OS. both for home and for professional environment. Seems that Windows 11 will be the last Microsoft OS I'll ever use

Same since I was 3. Windows 2000, XP, 7. With 8 it was obvious they didn't believe in personal computing anymore, for me that was the end of the "Decade of Windows Desktop". I'm naive cause I did and switched to Linux without looking back

Re: 2026 will be my year of the Linux desktop

#616

Post by casey2 »

eviks wrote: post #324
TACIXAT wrote: post #21

I strongly agree on this. I mained Windows for the last few years and got to the point where I was comfortable doing development similarly to how I would on Linux (text editor and command line build tools, cl, ml64, batch, etc.). I did that mostly so I could game and develop on the same machine. I learned a ton doing it but it has just gotten too awful to carry on. It was faster to rg to search files, drop into WSL a…

> It was faster to rg to search files, drop into WSL and run find for file name searches. Fixed via the Everything app - instant search of any file in a nice resizable/sortable table > if something is broken I have the control to fix it. Instant search doesn't exist, how do you fix it?

What year are you posting from lol?

Re: 2026 will be my year of the Linux desktop

#617

Post by VHRanger »

layer8 wrote: post #386
bluecalm wrote: post #353

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While Everything is good on Linux you are spoiled with things like fzf or rgfzf (instant fuzzy search on text file content so you can find "TODO" or "ideas to try" in any file instantly).

Fzf also works on Windows. That being said, most content search I need is for PDFs and Office documents.

paperless-ngx?

Re: 2026 will be my year of the Linux desktop

#618

Post by GuB-42 »

AceJohnny2 wrote: post #35
roxolotl wrote: post #4

“start menus made with React Native, control-alt-delete menus that are actually just webviews” Haven’t used windows in five years or so but I’ve kept hearing bad things. This really is the icing on the cake though. Yea the AI stuff is dumb but if a OS manufacturer can’t be bothered to interact with their own UI libraries to build native UIs something has gone horribly wrong.

Microsoft has a history of creating new UI frameworks. IMHO it's the result of Ballmer's "Developers, developers, developers!" attitude, which I think is a good thing at core (court the developers that add value to your platform!) But this results in chasing a new paradigm every few years to elicit new excitement from the developers. It'll always be more newsworthy to bring in a new framework than add incremental fix…

Changing UI framework all the times is fine, so is not changing anything for decades. Different strategies that both have value. Reasonably you want to be somewhere in the middle, depending on the use case. In an industrial setting, production infrastructure, etc... you generally want to change as little as possible "if it isn't broken, don't fix it". On emerging, consumer-facing technology such as mobile in the 2000s, "move fast and break things" makes sense.

But anyways, it is not the problem. The problem is just that Microsoft today is doing a terrible job.

The best example, I think, is the control panel. Starting from Windows 8, they changed it. Ok fine, you may like it or hate it, but to be honest, it is not a big deal. The problem is that they never finished their job, more than a decade later! Not all options are available in the new UI, so sometimes the old control panel pops up in a completely different style with many overlaps in features. And every now and then, they shuffle things around in hope that one day, the old control panel won't be needed anymore.

If you make a change, commit to it! If you decide to replace the old control panel, I don't want to see it anymore. It is certainly easier said than done, but if you are a many-billion dollar company and that's your flagship product, you can afford to do hard things!

Using a web engine to build UIs is fine too. As an OS-wide component, a web engine is not that big in terms of resource use, if properly optimized. The problem with Electron is that every app ships with its own engine, so if you have 10 apps, you have 10 engines loaded. But everything uses the same engine, and apps don't abuse it, then the overhead is, I think, almost negligible. It is rare not to have a browser loaded nowadays, so system components can take advantage of this. But again, you need to do it right and it takes skills, effort and resources.

Re: 2026 will be my year of the Linux desktop

#619

Post by rasmus-kirk »

sails wrote: post #291
nntwozz wrote: post #144

I'm giving Apple the benefit of the doubt until macOS 27 (but I'm still on 15.7.4 hehe). Mac OS X and Aqua wasn't very well received either at launch. A similar thing happened with the flat design of iOS 7. Apple's pattern is initially going overboard with a new design and then scaling it back slowly like a sculptor. I think they're happy with this method, even if things miss at first the big changes usually create a…

Adding from Mac perspective, I am also keeping an eye on Linux. I’ve hit a wall with Mac window management, and find the operating system just gets in the way for professional use across multiple of their digital “desktops”. I have no useful way to isolate work streams, and would gladly move to something better. The blocker for Linux for me as someone who wants some level of reliability has always been fiddling with…

Keep an eye out for PopOS Cosmic. I have daily drived it since alpha with admittedly some issues, but I see the improvement! Unlike a lot of other "Just Works" distros, it actually has proper tiling, and unlike the specialized tiling WM's I don't have to configure a bunch of stuff!

I do heavily configure applications, but all of these are terminal based now-a-days.

Re: 2026 will be my year of the Linux desktop

#620

Post by leptons »

wltr wrote: post #604
leptons wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If Microsoft could make me move to Linux, they will be getting a lot more people to switch. I was very into Microsoft's OS since v3.0, I used Outlook for all my email for decades. I recently moved over to Linux Mint and Firebird for email and have not looked back. All my Windows VMs are now Linux VMs. All of Microsoft's invasive "AI" was the last straw. I don't like the direction they are headed.

I was a bit puzzled by Firebird (I thought that’s a fork of Thunderbird, like, say, LibreWolf or Waterfox), but I couldn’t quickly find the project, so my assumption is that it’s just the misprint, and author thinking of Fire-fox -> Fire-bird, not being into ecosystem for too long to remember the actual bird. Anyway, that’s irrelevant to the point author’s making, and I’m happy there’s a new Linux adopter now. Thanks…

Yes, I did not get the name right. Firefox -> Firebird is what I misremembered.
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